


Thicker Than Water

by Sholio



Series: The Epic Post-Series Road Trip of DOOM [7]
Category: Iron Fist (TV)
Genre: Flogging, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Past Abuse, Post-Canon, Sibling Bonding, Whipping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-30
Updated: 2018-12-30
Packaged: 2019-09-30 07:35:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17219675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: Danny and Ward find a K'un Lun branch sect who might have some answers about the Iron Fist. The only problem is, they think Ward is with the Hand and refuse to deal with Danny until he proves he's not.





	Thicker Than Water

**Author's Note:**

> Despite the slightly alarming tags/notes, this fic is not actually that violent (though I put the violence warning on there just to be on the safe side). This is from a detailed (and wonderful) prompt on Tumblr; see prompt at end, as it's full of spoilers for the fic. Also for my h/c bingo "whipping/flogging" square. 
> 
> Title from the phrase "blood is thicker than water." According to some, this refers to kinship/family; according to others, it means chosen family/blood brotherhood is stronger than birth family. Either one of which applies in its own way to Danny and Ward.
> 
> I've also started putting some of my post-season-2 stories in continuity with each other, so you might notice that this is now in a series. It's still completely standalone (though some of the future stories might start to become less so).

Ward couldn't remember the last time he'd been outside on a night this miserable, let alone in the middle of absolute nowhere. Cold rain sluiced around them and lightning forked overhead as thunder crashed much too close. Ward had tried counting to figure out how far away it was -- he had a vague memory of doing that as a kid, counting one-one-thousand, two-one-thousand while huddled under the covers with Joy and Danny, both of them tiny and terrified of storms and clinging to him for comfort until he eventually kicked them out to go back to their own damn beds.

... he hadn't thought about that in years, actually. 

But he didn't even remember for sure what the numbers meant, and anyway, thunder and lightning were coming at the same time, which meant the storm was right on top of them as they clambered their way up a path up the side of a goddamn cliff. Getting struck by lightning would just be the cherry topping on a really long, shitty day.

Danny had been apologizing for the last hour, which really didn't help as much as Danny seemed to think it ought to.

"I didn't know it would be like this. We could turn around and go back to town," Danny offered. In the flashes of lightning, he looked as bedraggled and miserable as Ward felt. 

"Yeah, I don't like our odds of actually being able to get down this mountain in this weather." Rain sluiced across the path in front of them. Ward glanced behind them just as the lightning flickered again. It was true: you really _shouldn't_ look down.

"We must be almost there," Danny said.

Ward grunted. He was cold, and the wind was starting to pick up. They'd hitched a ride most of the way from town on the back of a rickety farm truck, but the farmer had dropped them off a long time and a lot of climbing ago.

Ward didn't for a moment believe that the people in the monastery at the top of this climb, K'un Lun rejects or not, risked this precarious goat trail every single time they had to make a run down to the village in the valley for toilet paper or a spare toothbrush. No, there was no way they didn't have a secret road down the back of the mountain, while they made visitors climb at a 45-degree angle on a cliff face.

In a rainstorm.

Although with the way the temperature was dropping, it might be a snowstorm soon.

"We're going to die of hypothermia," he remarked to Danny, as they clambered across a fallen slab of rock. Danny turned back to give him a hand over the slickest part of the rock; Ward took it with a sigh. "That's assuming we don't die of something else first, like, say, falling off a cliff."

"I'm sorry about this," Danny said. Again.

"Danny, I swear to you, if you apologize to me one more time, I'm pushing you over the edge."

"We could find somewhere to hole up for shelter," Danny said with complete unconcern for his threats.

Ward waved a hand at the cliff.

"... once we find somewhere to hole up. But really," Danny said, looking up and pointing at the lights of the monastery above them, gleaming through the rain, "we really _are_ almost there."

"Hooray for us," Ward muttered under his breath. He adjusted his pack on his back, trying not to think about how wet everything inside must be. There were no dry socks in his immediate future. At least the two things he really wanted to keep dry (sketchbook and passport) were in a plastic bag, courtesy of previous rainstorm-related incidents.

All complaining aside, though, he _was_ genuinely curious about these people. Hard to believe, in these months of hanging around with Danny, but he had yet to meet a secretive sect from a mystic city before.

"They're called the Keepers," Danny had explained, weeks ago, right before hauling Ward off on their latest wild goose chase. "It's a religious order --" because of course it was; at this point Ward wondered if there were any normal people in K'un Lun, the sort of people who got married and had families and didn't live at the top of fucking mountains. "-- who deal as, well, I guess you'd call them mediators between K'un Lun and the outside world. I looked for them before, when the city disappeared, but this is the first solid lead I've gotten on them. They live in this world, not in K'un Lun, but most of them come from the City originally, and they probably know more about the Iron Fist and how it works than anyone else we're going to be able to find."

Which, Ward now decided with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, was a terrible reason to end up stuck on a mountainside in pouring ice-cold rain. For fuck's sake, people, get a _phone._

On the other hand, Danny was right: they were close to the monastery. The path had become appallingly steep, but it climbed through a cleft in the rocks which at least reduced their chances of falling off the mountain, and they came out on a relatively flat place in front of a pair of high stone gates. Behind the gates, the stone walls of the monastery loomed above them, dripping rain from the swooping corners of layered, pagoda-style roofs.

"Doing okay?" Danny asked him quietly, as they waited to be acknowledged after a few slams on a giant brass knocker shaped like some kind of lion-dog thing.

The thought occurred to Ward that, while he was winded and tired, he would've been completely incapable of a climb like that just a few months ago. That was actually a nice feeling. And it was amazing what the possibility of food and a bed in the near future did for his mood. He took a few deep breaths and tried to adjust the sodden pack to a more comfortable place on his shoulders.

"Oh yeah, I'm great. I absolutely love being cold and wet and miserable; it's my favorite thing."

Danny opened his mouth, looking like he was poised on the verge of another apology. Ward glared at him. Instead, Danny reluctantly smiled, swiped a mess of bedraggled hair out of his eyes, and nudged Ward in a friendly kind of way. "I really owe you one for coming up here with me. You get to pick the place after this. Beaches, or some fancy resort ... whatever you want."

Tired as he was, it was impossible to keep from smiling back when Danny grinned at him like that. Traveling with Danny was exhausting, inconvenient, and definitely not comfortable, also not exactly the world's safest thing -- but the camaraderie was something he'd never experienced before. They might both be cold and wet and miserable, but they were in this together, in some weird way, and maybe, sort of, that was worth climbing up a mountain for.

At least if they got a hot bath and dinner soon.

 

*

 

"What do you mean, 'no'?"

Danny glared through the tiny aperture in the door at an unfriendly-looking monk, dry and cozy inside. Ward waited nearby, looking impatient and cold and bored -- and completely uncomprehending, since the conversation was taking place in Mandarin, of which Danny had only managed to teach him a few words so far.

"I said no," the monk said, "and I meant no. Do you think we did not do our research on you, Iron Fist ... if you are indeed even worthy of the title, given the company you keep. We have a book filled with the names of those who work with the Hand, and this filthy dog is among them."

"Ward doesn't work with the Hand," Danny said, between his teeth.

"He is a known associate."

"His _father_ worked with them. Ward never cooperated," Danny lied, without a hint of shame. Ward had been forced to do it (well, mostly) and therefore, at least for purposes of getting out of a pouring rainstorm threatening to turn into an ice storm, it didn't count. 

" _You_ may come in, Iron Fist, if you renounce this Hand filth."

"Of course I don't renounce him, he's my brother!"

"Hey, what's the holdup?" Ward asked, drifting closer as his never-especially-strong patience frayed.

"They won't let us in," Danny said in English, glaring at the monk, who looked blandly unconcerned.

"Why the heck not?"

"Um." Knowing how Ward (understandably) felt about Harold, Danny couldn't think of a tactful way to say this, but the cold rain sluicing down the back of his collar was a pretty good motivator. "So, uh, they know about Harold."

Ward's shoulders hunched up and he looked suddenly prickly and defensive, as he typically did when the topic of his dad came up. "What about him?"

"They know he was working with the Hand. They won't let us in because of that."

"Because my _dad_ worked with the Hand? Did you tell them everybody had a falling out? That they tried to kill him?"

"I explained all of that," Danny said.

"And? Okay. Look." Ward shoved him out of the way to address the slit in the door, speaking slowly and clearly with emphatic hand gestures. "My dad is dead. You get that? Dead? He's not with the Hand anymore because he's dead, and anyway --"

Danny finally managed to push him back. "Ward, they don't speak English. You're not helping."

"I do actually understand it," the monk said in Mandarin. "Although I do not wish to defile myself by speaking it to this creature. You can tell this Hand filth --"

"He's not Hand!" Danny snapped. "Or filth!"

"... that we care nothing for his words. All I hear are the lies of a Hand spy and an Iron Fist so debased that he is a shame to K'un Lun."

"What'd he say?" Ward demanded.

Danny huffed out a breath and decided that accurately translating wouldn't improve the situation at all. "I'm still trying to explain to them that you're not Hand."

"Wait," Ward said, his face going through about twelve different emotions before settling on disbelieving outrage. "They think _I'm_ Hand?"

"Ward --" Danny began, as he was shoved out of the way again.

"I'm not with the Hand! I never was! My dad was. He's dead. Did I mention he's dead? Danny," Ward said angrily, " _tell_ them."

"I'm trying." The look on Ward's face combined with his drowned-rat appearance was almost funny ... or would have been, if they hadn't been freezing cold, at the top of a mountain, being given the brush-off by the only people who could offer them any hope of not having to climb back down the mountain in the dark and the rain. Danny ran his hand through his wet hair and turned back to the door as the monk started to slide the little aperture shut. "Wait!" Danny stuck his hand in the opening, wincing as it pinched his fingers. "Look, it's very late. We're cold, and wet, and tired. We've been traveling all day. Is there anywhere you can put us up for the night, so we can discuss this in the morning?"

"The Hand dog may not enter these gates," the monk said. "You may, if you renounce --"

"No," Danny said flatly. He kept his fingers obstinately in the opening, resisting the monk's attempts to close it. "Just give us a place to sleep overnight. It's not the way of K'un Lun to turn away travelers."

"This isn't the sacred city, and you're lucky it's not. The keepers of the true city would run your companion through where he stands."

Danny carefully maneuvered himself in front of Ward, keeping his hand in the door. "No one is stabbing anyone. Listen, can I talk to your superior?"

"We are all equal here in --"

"Oh come on, I grew up in a place like this, I know how it works. There's a hierarchy and someone is in charge, and I'm going to stand here until you get him. In fact, I'm going to stand here and sing." He paused, mentally translating into Mandarin, and began, "This is the song that never ends, it just goes on and on, my friends --"

He got through a few iterations, with his fingers still wedging the slot in the door open against all attempts to close it, before the monk quietly but audibly cursed. "Wait here," he said, and ducked back, vanishing from sight.

"Am I completely wrong about the tune, or were you just singing The Song That Never Ends in Chinese?" Ward said.

"It worked, didn't it?"

"Danny. We're still standing in the rain."

"He's getting his boss. I think." Danny sat down with his back to the door. After a moment, Ward joined him. It was marginally more sheltered here; at least they had the door at their back, to break the wind somewhat. And they couldn't possibly get wetter.

The rain started pouring harder. Okay, he was wrong.

"I'm _really_ sorry I brought you up here," he said mournfully.

"You've said that," Ward said. "And said that. Look, I wanted to see the secret mystical monastery too. A regrettable life choice, in retrospect, but I was making terrible decisions long before you showed up back in New York." His shoulder was almost touching Danny's, but he pulled away and looked over at him, his hair having come loose from its usual slicked-back state and hanging into his eyes, dripping rainwater. "You know," he said more quietly, "speaking of all of that ... they're not _that_ wrong, Danny. About me."

"You're not Hand," Danny said, flaring to quick, loyal defense. "You never were. You never had a choice."

"Maybe not, but I did a lot of their dirty work, for a lot of years. And before you say anything, it's not like I didn't know. I _did_ know."

"Ward --" Danny began, but then he nearly topped backwards when the doors behind them opened with a clunk of disengaging bolts.

The two of them, looking up, found themselves facing an unfriendly-looking semicircle of saffron-robed monks armed with swords and crossbows.

There was an awkward tussle as Ward grabbed Danny and tried to pull him down, while Danny tried to get between Ward and the weapons (on the general principle that they were a lot less likely to shoot the Iron Fist) and all they managed to do was clonk their heads together. Danny won their brief wrestling match, threw Ward to the ground with a modified headlock and climbed on top of of him. "He's not Hand," he said in Mandarin.

"So you claim." The speaker stepped through the assembled group of monks: an elderly man, his back ramrod-straight despite limbs gnarled with arthritis, wearing a palpable air of authority. 

Danny bowed from his kneeling position. Ward, underneath him, spit out a mouthful of mud and said, "Get off me before I kill you."

"They understand English!" Danny hissed out of the corner of his mouth. Ward shut up. Danny very carefully climbed to his feet, and when Ward tried to do the same, getting as far as his knees, Danny pressed a firm hand on his shoulder to keep him down. Danny bowed again and tried to look like a serene Iron Fist who hadn't just been mud-wrestling his brother in the rain. "You are the lama in charge of this monastery?"

"And you, I understand, are the Iron Fist." The lama scraped a scathing glance up and down the mud-covered pair of them. "You don't look like much."

Danny smiled slightly. One thing about growing up as an outsider in K'un Lun was that insults rolled right off him. "So I've been told. I do in fact have much to learn. I've come here seeking answers about the Iron Fist and K'un Lun."

The lama didn't smile in return; his face didn't even twitch. "We do not speak to those who associate with the Hand."

"He's not. Really. Whatever you think you know, you obviously don't have the whole story."

"Do you deny he worked with the Hand in the city of New York?"

"I deny that he did it by choice," Danny said carefully. "Everything he did was under duress, and as soon as he had free choice, he renounced them. He helped me fight them."

"How can you trust that his loyalties do not lie with the Hand still?"

"They just don't," Danny said. "He's on my side. Completely. I'd trust him with my life."

The lama's expression indicated that he didn't think much of this. "Is he willing to prove it?"

"What are they saying?" Ward whispered loudly.

"Shhh!" Danny hissed back, pushing him back down when Ward tried to get up. They were still speaking Mandarin, and he could see Ward's frustration at not being able to understand the conversation growing steadily. "Prove it how?"

"I will permit him inside," the lama said, "and answer your questions, if he is willing to submit to a test to prove his loyalty to you."

Well, _that_ didn't set off alarm bells or anything. "What kind of a test?"

"We shall decide if he agrees."

"What? No! We're not doing anything if we don't know what we're agreeing to."

"What?" Ward demanded, seeing Danny's alarm. "What are they saying?"

"They say you have to undergo some kind of test to prove you're not Hand," Danny said in English, "which is obviously ridiculous, because --"

"What kind of test?"

"They won't tell me!" Danny noticed the lama was holding up a hand for silence, and managed to squash his urge to complain, at least long enough to muster up a new argument.

But the lama was already speaking, and this time, unexpectedly, in fluent English with a slight British accent -- addressing himself directly to Ward. "Yes, a test. Are you willing to undergo an ordeal to prove your loyalty to the Iron Fist?"

"Wait," Danny protested, " _ordeal_ sounds a lot more ominous, Ward, don't say yes --"

"Sure," Ward said. "Why not. Just tell me what to do and I'll do it, if it gets me fucking _dry."_

"You don't have to do anything!" Danny burst out. "You don't have to do any kind of ... of loyalty test, or whatever they want."

"Why not? Dad had me do that kind of thing all the time." It was tossed off casually, but Ward looked away, not meeting Danny's eyes. "So just let me do the thing, so we can get inside."

Danny seethed, but the lama nodded, the armed monks stepped back, and Ward slowly climbed to his feet, accepting Danny's hand up.

"You don't have to," Danny whispered.

"Look, seriously," Ward murmured back, "I grew up with Harold, okay? I know all about mind games, believe me."

"That's not what this is," Danny whispered back.

"Yeah? Looks like it to me." Ward glowered at the monks. "Let's get this over with."

But nothing happened immediately. They were escorted into the monastery at swordpoint, through dripping, leafless gardens that were probably beautiful at less inclement times of the year, and down a flight of stone stairs. A novice sweeping the stairs stared at them and then hastily jumped out of the way and bowed. It made Danny think of himself as a boy, desperately eager for any break from routine. He smiled back at the boy, who looked too paralyzed with shyness to do anything except bow over his broom.

They were in an underground corridor now, looking like something straight out of K'un Lun. Stone lamps lit the low-ceilinged corridor with flickering golden light.

"Is this a dungeon?" Ward muttered.

"No?" Danny said hesitantly, but it got harder to convince himself of that when the lama opened a door onto a cell containing absolutely nothing, not even a pallet of straw, just a bare stone floor. As soon as they were inside, the door thudded shut. It was almost completely dark inside the cell, lit only by light coming through the door's single small, barred window.

Danny tested the door. It didn't open.

"You know, I hate to break this to you," Ward said from behind him, in a voice dry enough that it should have sucked the moisture out of their sodden clothing, "but these people don't seem very trustworthy."

Danny slipped off his pack and dropped it squishily beside him on the floor. His heart ached. He'd been hoping for ... well ... he didn't even know. A welcome, maybe. Something vaguely like the only place he'd ever known as home since losing New York fifteen years ago. Instead he was greeted by weapons, a prison cell, and people accusing one of those closest to him of being a Hand spy. He was just, suddenly ... tired. Of everything. He leaned his forehead against the cell door.

After a moment, footsteps approached him from behind, and Ward lightly touched his shoulder. "Hey ... uh ... Danny? You okay?"

Sympathy from Ward -- the person he'd gotten into this mess -- just made him feel guiltier. "Yeah, I'm fine," Danny said. He pulled away and knelt to open his pack. Ward got the idea and retreated. "I'm absolutely fine. _I'm_ not the one who has to go through some kind of unspecified ordeal."

"How bad can it be?" Ward asked in a flippant tone, which made Danny look up at him sharply. Ward was rummaging in his pack as well, not looking at him.

"Hey listen, what you said earlier," Danny began hesitantly. "About Harold --"

"Don't want to talk about it."

"Yes, but ..."

"It's done. He's dead." Ward pulled out handfuls of wadded-up, damp clothing and dropped it on the floor. "It doesn't matter now. I'll just go along with whatever stupid headfuck they plan to pull on us and say whatever they want. I know how that game works."

"Ward -- Ward, listen." Danny reached over and caught hold of his arm. Ward tried to shake him off. Danny hung onto him tenaciously and made Ward look at him. "I'm not going to let them do anything to you, okay? Whatever they want to do to you, they'll have to do to me first."

"Jeez ... Danny ..." Ward huffed out a half-laugh. He sat down abruptly on the floor; Danny, who still had a grip on his sleeve, was pulled down with him. "That's not how it works, okay? They won't _let_ you. Having two of us is just going to make it worse, because they'll use us against each other. Like Dad used to do with me and Joy. All you can do is keep your head down, play the game, tell them what they want to hear until they're satisfied or they give up. C'mon, man. Don't be naive. That's how it works."

Danny stared at Ward in the half-light coming in through the door. Ward, pale and grim-faced, was looking away, staring at the wall as if looking back into the past.

"You think I don't know that?" Danny said at last, quietly. "You think they didn't do things like that with me and Davos in K'un Lun? Pit us against each other, try to undermine us to make us fight harder and better?"

Now Ward looked at him in genuine surprise, his eyes glittering in the dim light. Danny realized he still had a hand fisted in Ward's damp sleeve and let go, sitting back suddenly and painfully on the flagstones.

"I mean," he said, a little embarrassed. "I'm not trying to compare it to what happened with you and Harold and Joy. It's just ... you _can_ fight back. You can beat them. Davos and I used to fight back in little ways. Like, bringing each other food when one of us was locked up and punished. They could hurt our bodies, but they couldn't change our hearts."

Ward just looked at him for a long moment, and then he jerked his gaze away. "Okay, fine, maybe it was different with Harold, or maybe I'm not _like_ you, Danny. I just give in. Heart and everything else. Play their game and get through it, that's all I know. So just let me do this my way."

"Ward -- no -- wait --" But Ward turned a shoulder to him, digging in his backpack, and Danny, after a moment, scooted over to his own and got out a dry hoodie to replace his sodden one.

"I think you're brave," he said, a little bit helplessly. "To have gotten through that."

Ward didn't say anything.

"And I ... I'm sorry I brought you here --"

"Danny," Ward said sharply, flinging another handful of clothes and random camping items onto the floor with a sudden violent motion, " _please_ knock it off."

 

*

 

There was something about Danny that invariably made Ward feel guilty about snapping at him. It was like kicking a puppy. Even when the situation he was in was directly and clearly Danny's fault ...

Except no, it wasn't. That wasn't fair. Because the K'un Lun rejects were right, damn it. He _was_ Hand. Or at least he had been. Even if he'd never taken a loyalty oath or agreed to their fucked-up rules, he'd acted as Harold's catspaw at Rand for years. And he hadn't cared, not really. Danny had thrown evidence on his desk that Rand was funneling heroin into New York, and he still hadn't cared.

Ward gave up on trying to find a shirt that was drier than the one he had on, and looked across the cell at Danny, who was standing on tiptoe now, feeling for loose stones around the doorway.

Danny, who he'd been an absolute shit to for their entire childhoods, and then welcomed back to New York by trying to kill him.

Yeah, it wasn't really a surprise that K'un Lun might have a _small_ problem with that. Even if, as far as Ward could tell, they didn't really value the Iron Fist much as anything other than a golden-glowing-hand receptacle, the entire suite of things Ward had done, or failed to do, over his miserable excuse for a life had probably more than earned him something like this.

Danny looked over his shoulder. "Do you want something dry to wear? I've got most of my clothes wrapped up in plastic."

"No," Ward said.

"You're just going to sit there and be wet, then."

Ward glowered at him.

"You should put your dry clothes in plastic bags; that'll keep them from --"

"Danny, shut up," he said, and instantly regretted it when Danny turned around and started working on tapping at the stones around the door again. Angry at himself, at Danny, at this entire stupid situation, Ward hurled a tin camp cup across the cell; it clattered off the wall and fell, dented, to the floor. Then he leaned his head back against the wall, and after a little while, he said, "Sorry."

"It's okay," Danny said. "I'd be tense too."

To which his immediate response was to lash out, a rush of anger from that poison well of darkness that he carried around inside him. He managed to crush it down, this time. 

_You lead with asshole,_ Bethany had said, before he'd hurt and angered her to the point that she didn't want to be around him anymore; apparently he'd led with asshole once too often. But the thing was, she wasn't wrong. And he hated that about himself. He didn't want to be that person anymore.

It didn't help that he was freezing his ass off; the cell didn't feel any warmer than outside. Its only saving grace was that they weren't being directly rained on. He dug a damp sweater out of his pack and wrapped it around his shoulders. It was wool; it was supposed to be warm even when it was soaking wet. 

He leaned wearily against the wall and watched Danny give up on trying to find a way out around the edges of the door, sit down, and start rummaging in his pack again.

"Any idea what they might want me to do?" he asked.

"I don't know," Danny said. "This isn't quite like anything they had me do when I was training. I'm not sure what to expect."

If this was like Harold's little "tests," Ward thought grimly, then there wouldn't be a "win" condition. There would just be some kind of mindfuck that basically existed to make these guys feel more powerful, and they would give up when they'd gotten what they wanted: humiliation, submission, acknowledgement of their victory. For a long time he'd mistaken Harold's games for something he could win, or at least score points in. He'd eventually realized that the only person scoring points was his dad, and it wasn't like he even could opt out of game-playing, because Harold made all the rules.

He didn't think these guys were going to be any different. Power-tripping assholes were the same no matter where they came from. If Danny still had faith in K'un Lun after everything, that had a whole lot more to do with Danny than with them.

Of course, he thought bleakly, that core aspect of Danny -- the part of him that was made of loyalty and faith in people -- was the only reason why Danny had anything to do with _him,_ so it wasn't like he could complain about it too much.

The thing was, all cynicism about their motives and methods aside, he thought the local monks were well within their rights to ask him to prove that he wasn't working against Danny. Hell, if they actually had accurate intel about the things he and Harold had gotten up to in New York, he probably was lucky they hadn't just decided to skewer him with a sword where he stood.

Danny was willing to accept, on no proof whatsoever, that he'd changed and they were on the same side now -- but that was Danny through and through. Ward himself didn't even know how to explain it; how was he supposed to explain it to hostile strangers?

 _Why are you helping me?_ Danny had asked him, that night in the alley, a year ago.

 _I'm helping me,_ he'd said -- because it was the only answer he had to give, the only one that made sense.

He didn't know why the world had flipped on its ear in that moment when Danny had walked into the penthouse, prepared to give himself up to save their lives. He only knew that no one had ever done anything like that for him before, not in his entire life -- and he knew that Danny hadn't really done it for him, certainly not for him alone; but still, not a goddamn one of them deserved it, they'd done nothing but reject him and try to kill him ever since he'd been back in New York, and yet ...

And yet Danny had walked into the penthouse and given himself up to the Hand to save them, and something had changed for Ward in that instant, changed irrevocably and utterly. But it wasn't like he could expect anyone else to understand it when he didn't really understand it himself.

Really, going through some sort of unspecified ordeal to prove that he hadn't faked his turnaround from Harold's side to Danny's was ... something that anyone who wasn't Danny would probably have demanded a long time ago, honestly. 

He owed it to Danny, and thinking about it that way made him feel better about the whole situation, helping to unwind a tangled skein of tension coiled up inside him. He didn't like giving these assholes the satisfaction, but Danny ... Danny, to whom he owed this and more, a thousand times over -- 

He _wanted_ to do this, for Danny's sake, and that relaxed him a little, gave him a sense of purpose. He couldn't undo any of what he'd done in the past, couldn't make up for it, but he could do this.

 

***

 

Danny desperately missed his ability to warm himself with chi. He could have meditated his way into a slightly warmer condition, and also passed the time more efficiently in a meditative state, but Ward couldn't, so it felt like cheating to try.

After awhile he stood up and began going through a set of basic posture exercises. "Exercise will help you warm up," he ventured in Ward's direction.

"Good for you," Ward said, huddled with a damp sweater wrapped around his shoulders.

"I could show you how."

Ward took a breath, seemed like he was going to say something else, and then he said, "Not right now."

Danny closed his mouth and worked on aligning his chi, letting it flow through him, grounding his feet on the flagstones and letting all his irritation with Ward and with himself and with the whole situation flow out of him, into the Earth, leaving him calm and placid as a stone sinking into deep waters ...

The tramp of sandaled feet outside the cell jolted him out of his trance. Ward straightened up, opening his eyes, at the thunk of a bolt being drawn back, and they both scrambled to their feet.

The lama and a small circle of warrior-monks waited out in the hallway. All but the lama wore swords, though none were drawn. Danny assumed this meant that their situation had not improved, and he found his right hand closing into a fist that he had to force back open. It wasn't like it would help them anyway. The channel to the Iron Fist was still black and dead, the Fist's energy and all that it represented just out of his reach.

"Come with me," the lama said calmly in English.

Danny started to reach for his backpack. The lama shook his head. "Your things will be taken to a room prepared for you."

"So we get to stay?" Ward asked, looking skeptical.

"That's up to you. Come with me."

With that comment, which Danny found ominous, the lama turned and led the way briskly; they had little choice but to follow or be left behind. As they hurried to catch up, Ward leaned close enough to murmur to Danny, "These guys are assholes."

"They have their ways," Danny murmured back, not even convincingly to his own ears.

"Yeah, sure. Still dicks though."

They went up a flight of steps, out of the catacombs into a small courtyard. It was still raining lightly, a chill rain turning to ice on the upper parapets of the stoneworks around them. The courtyard was lit by torches held by solemn-faced boys, standing under the overhanging roof surrounding the open, flagged area. The only prominent feature of the otherwise empty courtyard was a pole in the center, with an iron ring set into each side of it. Danny's gaze went straight to it, and a cold pit opened up in the bottom of his stomach.

"Ward," he muttered under his breath, "you don't have to do anything they ask, okay? Don't do _anything_ if they don't explain it first. _Please,_ Ward."

"Why not?" Ward whispered back, looking alarmed.

"Hush!" the lama said sharply, holding up a hand. 

"Because I've known places like this in K'un Lun --"

Two of the monks guarding them held out their swords, pressing one to Danny's abdomen, the other to Ward's. Danny stopped talking. The only sound was the hissing and spitting of the torches and the rain pattering on the courtyard and the roofs.

"We came here seeking information and hospitality," Danny began quietly, in Mandarin. He kept glancing at the pole, its wood stained dark with more than water. "We have not found that, so we will gladly leave and trouble you no more."

"I think that's up to the one who travels at your side, Iron Fist," the lama said in the same language.

"If this is about punishing me --" Danny began.

"It is not about you, Iron Fist."

"Honored One," Danny snapped, his voice now several degrees away from respectful, "if that pole is for what I think it's for, you have no _right_ to expect this of him!"

The lama turned his head and gestured. From beneath the dripping eaves, another monk stepped forward, this one muscular and tall. He wore the same saffron robes as his slighter brethren, but looked like he could hold his own in a bar fight.

He carried something in his hand: a short leather-wrapped handle, with a spray of slim braided thongs, dark with age and use, dangling from the handle. The thongs glinted in the lamplight: they had bits of stone or glass embedded in them. Danny remembered all too well how much those hurt. He remembered, too, Davos and the Thunderer walking him through the steps for gathering his chi to heal the wounds, so thoroughly that no scars were left behind. But he could no longer do that, nor could he lead Ward through it.

"Whoa," Ward said, seeing the whip. He looked at the pole and Danny could see the penny dropping. "Whoa, _hold_ on, this is what we're talking about?"

Furious, Danny moved between Ward and the monks. "Ward, you don't have to do a single thing they --"

And then he fell silent in surprise, because Ward had begun unbuttoning his shirt.

"Yeah, sure," he said, his voice brittle and hard. "Sure, why the hell not. Let's get this over with."

 

***

 

The whip looked like a cat'o'nine tails, or its Eastern equivalent. Surprisingly, something his dad had never come up with. But then, his dad's loyalty tests were mostly mind games.

Mostly.

But not all.

Sometimes it was _I hit you here, where the bruise is hidden by your clothes, and you don't tell anyone, and that's how you win this game ..._

Except there was no winning for anyone but Harold. Not when you played Harold's games.

Yeah. He knew how this was done. And the thing was, bringing out the whips and the belts at the _start_ of the whole thing was a relief. It meant he knew what was expected of him, he knew what he had to do to get through it, and as he'd said to Danny months ago, he was pretty good at taking a punch. He didn't even really mind all that much.

Danny, on the other hand ... Ward hadn't seen that level of incandescent outrage on Danny's face since those very early days when Danny had first come back to New York, back when he was still a seething cauldron of free-floating rage with a deceptively placid hippie layer on top. Danny's face was white in the light of the torches. He looked like they were planning on flogging _him,_ not Ward.

"Don't!" he snapped, and reached out a hand, clamping it on Ward's wrist before Ward could peel his shirt off. "They used that thing on me, Ward, I _know_ how much it hurts --"

"They whipped you?" He was genuinely shocked, although in retrospect he wasn't sure why. He'd known Danny's life in K'un Lun was no bed of roses, but he hadn't realized it was that bad. He leveled a glare at the monks watching them.

"Never mind that, just stay _put_ , okay?" And with that, Danny switched to a torrent of Mandarin. Ward strained his ears, trying to catch the handful of words he knew. He really needed to have Danny teach him more than just the basics for ordering in restaurants and finding train stations.

Danny had let go of him while he was talking (using both hands to express whatever point he was trying to make) so Ward went ahead and stripped off his shirt and undershirt, leaving himself bare to the waist, shivering in the rain. No matter what Danny said, he just wanted to goddamn get it over with. Yeah, it would hurt. But he knew how to deal with that. And if this was all they had to do, he could deal. Being hurt physically wasn't the worst thing he'd thought of by far. He had expected them to pit him and Danny against each other, still halfway expected that, but if all they wanted to do was flog him, hell, why not just let them do it and call it good?

The monk-in-charge guy said something that set off Danny's fury again. Danny spun around and grabbed Ward's wrist so hard that it felt like his fingers were leaving bruises. "They say a hundred strokes."

"O ... kay," Ward said cautiously, "that sounds like a lot." He wondered how being hit with a whip compared to a belt, or any of his dad's various improvised weapons.

"That'll _kill_ you. Or at least cripple you. That's not -- we're not. You hear me? This isn't happening!" Danny was addressing the Head Monk In Charge, bristling in fury; he'd sidled around so he was between Ward and the HMIC. "And speak to him, not me," Danny added, still spitting mad. "At least have the decency to address him in a language he understands."

The HMIC looked exasperated, but he turned to look at Ward, and said in English, "Do you agree to accept the --"

"Yes!" Ward said. "Shut up, Danny."

"He's not taking a hundred lashes," Danny said flatly. "He can't. That's not a test, that's cruelty. That's _murder."_

"He is Hand," the HMIC said simply. "They train their operatives to withstand pain."

Ward found himself smiling bitterly. Well, his dad _had_ done that, though perhaps not on purpose.

"I do this and we're good?" he said. "That's it, all square, you let us spend the night and tell Danny whatever he wants to know?"

"No!" Danny said.

"Yes," the Head Monk In Charge said over the top of him.

Danny dodged in the way again. "A hundred lashes is torture. Nothing is worth that.." He gave Ward a tormented look. "The point is that he's willing to do it at all. What about five for him, and the rest for me?"

"Hey, now, what?" Ward said, startled. "No!"

"If you suggest compromises, what of this as a compromise?" the HMIC suggested. "The Hand spy himself may declare when honor is satisfied. All he needs to do is tell us to stop, and we will stop. If we also agree, then all is well."

Ward smelled "mind game" here. He definitely knew how _that_ game was played. "I'd rather have the full fucking hundred than you people changing the rules as you go along," he spat, flinging the wadded-up ball of shirt and undershirt to the flagstones. "Can we just get this over with?"

The monks seemed to agree. At swordpoint, he and Danny were separated and Ward was herded into the courtyard. Icy needles of rain stung his bare shoulders.

"Don't! Ward!" Danny struggled to get to him, despite the swords pricking him.

"You want to get us both killed?" Ward said over his shoulder.

"They're not going to kill us," Danny said, with unwarranted optimism as far as Ward was concerned. "Look, just let us go! Put us outside! I think we'd rather take our chances out there than deal with this -- damn it --" He launched into Mandarin again, since English didn't seem to be getting through.

Ward wordlessly thrust his wrists into the shackles and, with an effort of willpower, held himself still as the iron bands were locked around his wrists. He heard the sounds of Danny having some kind of altercation with the guards and looked impatiently back to see that Danny was now being physically restrained. "Seriously, Danny, knock it off. This isn't the worst thing they could do. Stop it before they decide to _make_ it worse, okay?"

The other monks stepped back and the big guy with the whip came forward. It was raining harder now; Ward blinked the cold water out of his eyes as Flogging Dude drew back for the first strike. There was an instinctive urge to close his eyes that he resisted. In some ways it was harder when you knew it was coming, but it also meant you could brace for it; the surprise blows had always been the worst.

The first strike came with the needles-of-ice feeling that comes before severe pain. He breathed through it, icy tingling rushing along damaged nerve endings, with pain racing in their wake. The whip pulled back, ripping out of his flesh; he felt that, the way it tore as it pulled away.

It did hurt. It really did.

"Ward!" Danny yelled.

The next blow came before he had a chance to brace himself. The cords raked down his spine, feeling like they'd flayed through the skin straight down to raw nerves and muscle and bone. His entire body prickled with it, a rush of lightheadedness and heat. 

He managed to get into the rhythm of it, after that -- as much as you could. The body couldn't really prepare itself for pain; all you could do was fall into it, breathe through it, get yourself into that headspace where you told yourself you had no choice and just had to get through it, for however long it took. Wait it out.

_Thanks for the lesson, Dad._

They'd said he could stop it with a word, but ... he'd learned how _that_ worked from Harold, too. All the power was in their hands. Any leverage they pretended to give you was another way of exerting control. You couldn't win that game, and you couldn't even not play, because they made the rules and one of the rules was that you couldn't just quit. The only thing you could do was tough it out with whatever clench-jawed bit of stubbornness you could muster. You wouldn't _let_ yourself reach for the lifeline this time (only to see it snatched away); you wouldn't be the one to blink first.

You couldn't make them stop but you could at least refuse to give them the satisfaction of knowing they'd given you hope and then taken it away.

Wait ...

It took him a moment to realize it had stopped, and a moment longer to raise his head and look around to find out what had happened. He blinked rainwater out of his eyes and blurrily tried to make sense of what he was looking at.

Danny ... where the hell had Danny come from? 

Danny was standing between Ward and the rest of them, so close he was nearly touching Ward's bare back, and he had caught the whip with his bare hand. The knotted, glass-studded cords were tangled around his fingers, wrapped around his forearm. The rainwater ran dark with blood as it dripped off his fingers. His face, at least the side-slice of it that Ward could see, was white and set.

"No," he said.

Flogging-Dude tried to yank the whip free of Danny's arm. Danny gasped in pain as he was dragged forward, but he spun lightly on his feet, wrenched the whip (and how much that must've hurt, Ward didn't want to think) and with Flogging-Dude stumbling forward, Danny tripped him and then slammed an elbow into the back of his neck.

Ward watched, feeling oddly disconnected from it all; he felt lightheaded and strange. His teeth were chattering.

The whip came loose from the bigger man's hand, dangling from Danny's bloody fingers. Danny took two quick steps away from Ward and gripped the cords, untangling it from his arm with his jaw clenched to avoid making a sound. He had taken the blow on his right arm; now he shifted his grip to hold the whip's handle in his left and shook it out, snapping the cords in the rain while blood ran down the fingers of his limp right arm.

"Who's next?" he demanded.

There was a hushed silence around the courtyard. Ward found himself dazedly fascinated by the way every last one of these guys had their attention fixed on Danny.

It was easy to think of Danny as ... well, as Danny, the sweet hippie goofball who made friends wherever he went. But this was Danny Rand-Kai, the Living Weapon. His face was set, and Ward would lay odds that, wherever Danny had gone in his head, he wasn't feeling the pain of his severely lacerated fingers, even as mixed rainwater and blood ran in a steady stream off his fingertips. His face was cold and calm, his gaze roving around the men surrounding them, every line of his body alert.

When one of the monks moved, Danny slid forward with such grace that his feet hardly appeared to leave the ground. He snapped the whip forward in an overhand motion. The whip's tails tangled around his startled attacker's sword, and Danny gave it a tremendous wrench before his opponent could recover, yanking the sword out of his hands. It clattered on the cobbles and Danny kicked it away from the monks, toward the base of the pole. He spun around, lashing out with the whip and driving the monk back to the relative safety and shelter under the eaves.

"Next," Danny said, snapping the whip back and letting the cords drop to lie like quiescent snakes around his feet.

A crossbow bolt splintered on the cobblestones. Danny jumped back in surprise and looked up.

Ward was slower to react, turning his head dizzily to follow Danny's gaze and blinking water out of his eyes. In a flash of lightning above the monastery, he glimpsed the gleam of light on crossbows, on the upper balconies around the courtyard. There must be a dozen of them.

"We will not kill _you_ , Rand-Kai," the lama's quiet voice said from the shadows, in English. "They are not aiming at you. But we will kill him in a heartbeat if you do not desist. Will you stand down?"

Danny looked at Ward, and looked at the archers. Taking a long breath, he dropped the whip; it unfurled on the cobblestones like a tangle of dead snakes. He took a few quick steps over to plant himself between Ward and the crossbows, left hand clenched into a fist, and the right (the one that had, until recently, been the Iron Fist) hanging loose at his side.

Ward got, finally, a deep enough breath to speak. "Chill out, Danny," he managed to say, through chattering teeth.

Danny made a sound like he'd started to say something, and then reached back and touched Ward's arm and moved a little closer to him, blocking as much of the archers' field of fire as possible.

The monks moved in on them, then, and there was some kind of scuffle with Danny, but Ward wasn't entirely aware of what, exactly, happened back there, because they were also unlocking his shackles. His legs started to go out from under him and he caught himself by hooking his hands through the metal rings he'd been shackled to. He hadn't realized the shackles had been holding him up. His back felt like it was on fire; waves of heat and cold ran through him.

"Danny ..." he said, because if the idiot had gone and gotten himself stabbed after all of this, Ward was going to personally strangle him.

"Ward?" Danny said. So, not stabbed, apparently, and then Danny was using his good hand to loop Ward's arm over his shoulders and take most of his weight, which was humiliating but also, probably, necessary, if he didn't want to faceplant on the cobblestones. Ward fisted one hand in Danny's sodden shirt and managed not to fall over.

"What's happening?" he gasped out. They weren't going anywhere; they were just standing there, with Danny propping him up and the courtyard around them mostly full of hostile-looking monks.

"I'm not sure," Danny said. He started to raise the arm he wasn't using to hold up Ward, with bloody rainwater dripping off his lacerated fingers, and then let it drop -- like he'd forgotten for a minute that he couldn't Iron Fist with it anymore.

Ward just hung onto him and was dimly aware of Danny having some kind of conversation with the HMIC and then being made to walk somewhere. He went along with it because it wasn't like he could do anything else, with the world a haze and Danny the only solid thing in it.

 

***

 

Danny had Ward drooping on his shoulder and bleeding all over him, and his own blood running off his fingers, as they took him to a room off one of the second-floor balconies that turned out to have two pallets and their packs in it.

Danny lowered Ward carefully onto the first pallet. Ward's back was a bloody mess, but Danny didn't think the damage was as bad as it looked. He hoped. They had landed seven or eight strokes before he'd intervened, but they hadn't been going at Ward all that hard, based on some of what he'd seen in K'un Lun; the whip's damage, he thought, was mostly superficial, lacerating flesh and fat but not doing much damage to the muscles underneath.

He also hoped, now that the immediate crisis was past and second thoughts were starting to set in, that he hadn't done permanent damage to himself, grabbing the whip as he had -- now that he could no longer heal himself. Hands were sensitive, full of delicate nerves and tendons. His entire right arm was a sleeve of pain.

He sat on the second pallet and gripped his arm above the elbow, while blood dripped off his fingers onto the floor, and looked blankly at Ward sprawled on top of a blanket that was getting saturated with rainwater and blood. 

Ward was right, he thought numbly, it _was_ a mind game, not any kind of fair, legitimate test. He didn't even know what they were supposed to be proving, or what they _had_ proven. That they'd follow orders? That they _wouldn't_ follow orders? He wasn't sure if he'd made things worse or better by getting in the middle of it; he only knew that he couldn't, he _wouldn't_ just stand there and watch them beat Ward half to death.

And he still kept seeing it, the way Ward had just stripped off his shirt and walked out there, like it was all he expected, all he felt he deserved.

Danny leaned over to nudge at Ward's arm. "Hey," he said, "are you, uh ..."

Ward stirred, squirmed a little, and twisted around so he was looking at Danny. "If you are about to ask if I'm okay," he said through clenched teeth, "I'm going to beat you to death with your own chi."

Danny almost laughed in half-hysterical relief. If Ward could be sarcastic at him, then he _was_ okay -- well, more or less. 

They were both shivering. Danny struggled to his feet with the intent of getting blankets, or help, or something; they needed first aid, hell, they probably needed more than that, and it was just _like_ these people to leave them in yet another unheated cell. At least they had their packs, and there was a wooden chest against the wall that looked like the sort of thing that might have contained blankets and rugs back in K'un Lun.

He just had to get himself together enough to, well. Move.

The door opened and he moved, then, almost without his brain's conscious direction, to stand between Ward and the door.

It was the lama with a couple of other monks, carrying trays with various small pots and bowls of steaming water. No one was armed.

"Sit down, boy," the lama told Danny, and with that, laid hands firmly on him and maneuvered him out of the way. Danny put up just enough resistance to make a point, and then allowed himself to be steered to sit on the wooden chest against the wall.

"Danny?" Ward said sharply, pushing himself up on his arms and then gasping in pain.

"Lie down, fool," the lama told him, in English. He knelt in front of Danny and grasped Danny's injured arm firmly.

"It's okay, Ward," Danny said with confidence he didn't quite feel. "I think they're helping us."

"I had wondered how one such as you managed to gain the Fist in the first place," the lama murmured, as he began to sponge blood off Danny's lacerated forearm with warm, herb-scented water. "Now I begin to understand. Not through application of discipline, but through sheer stubbornness."

"Thanks, I think." The water tingled and stung. To keep his mind off it, Danny kept his gaze fixed across the room on Ward, who was getting the same treatment from the other two monks.

"Can you move your fingers? Your hand?"

"Why?" Danny said shortly.

"Because I am trying to determine the damage you've done to yourself, young fool."

Breathing through the pain, Danny spread his fingers and rotated his wrist.

"Hmm." The lama dipped his fingers into a pot of salve and smoothed it across the back of Danny's hand, spreading tingling, relieving numbness in its wake. "There seems to be little nerve or ligament damage, as far as I can tell. You're lucky."

" _You're_ lucky," Danny muttered. "Honored One."

"Oh? Why is that?"

Danny looked over at the other monks cleaning up Ward's back. In Mandarin, he said, "Because if you had killed or crippled my brother, I would have considered you enemies and dealt with you accordingly."

"Oh?" the lama murmured. 

"I am a living weapon," Danny said, gaze fixed now between his feet. "That's what your brethren in K'un Lun _made_ me. What do you expect?"

"You would have killed us?"

"If I had to," he said, staring at the floor. "It's what I'm meant for."

"You were _meant_ to kill the Hand," the lama said, and Danny glanced up at his face, and then away. "You don't seem to be doing a particularly good job of that."

"I hunted them across the world. Now the Hand is gone. Mostly." The lama's deft, arthritis-knotted fingers smoothed salve across Danny's wrist and arm, and Danny realized that not all his lightheadedness was because of cold and pain. His fingers on both hands felt vaguely numb and tingling. "What's in this stuff?"

"Nothing too potent. It will ease your pain and make it easier to sleep."

"It's not addictive, is it?" Danny asked, looking quickly over at Ward.

"Not in these quantities." The lama turned his head, looking where Danny was looking. Ward appeared to be asleep, but he opened his eyes and raised his head a little.

"You okay over there, Danny?"

"Fine," Danny said. The lama had switched to bandaging his arm; the other monks were doing the same to Ward's back. "Don't worry about it."

"I never thought I would see such a thing," the lama remarked, winding a length of linen around Danny's arm. "The Iron Fist and a member of the Hand --"

"He's _not,_ I don't know how many times I have to tell you people --"

"-- guarding each other."

"Family does that," Danny said, pointedly.

The lama didn't respond to that, just neatly tucked in the edges of the bandage. "Leave that alone overnight. We'll be back in the morning to redress your injuries. And," he added, rising with the grace of a much younger man, "at that time, we will speak of the questions you came here to ask."

Danny looked up quickly from picking at the edge of the bandage. "You have news of K'un Lun? Of the Iron Fist?"

"Tomorrow." The lama collected rolls of bandages and rose with the grace of a much younger man. "Summon one of us if you need anything."

Danny hesitated, then got up carefully, and bowed. The lama returned his bow briefly, and the monks left.

Ward, with a grunt of effort, rolled halfway onto his side, careful not to disturb his bandaged back too much. "So I didn't understand a word of that. What's going on? Did we pass their stupid test or do they have more fun planned for later?"

"I ... think we passed. I'm not sure." Danny's bandaged arm felt tingling-warm, but the rest of him was still cold enough he was shaking. He opened the chest, and aha, yes, wool blankets. He brought an armload of them over to the pallets. At this point his clothes were in the process of drying on him, and he couldn't find the energy to change, so he just dumped an armful of blankets on his pallet and got more for Ward.

"So, what then? Are we prisoners or guests now?" Ward pressed as Danny draped a blanket over him.

"They said they might answer our questions tomorrow. I don't think they're going to try to kill us." Danny lay down on his own pallet and pulled a wool blanket over him. It was warm, soft and a little scratchy, smelling of animal hair and herbs; that smell took him straight back to K'un Lun. "Hey, Ward, are you warm enough? Do you want something dry to change into?"

"It's not worth moving for," Ward said, his voice a tired drawl. "How's your hand?"

"Okay." Danny rolled onto his side and stretched it out, working the fingers despite the vaguely dulled pain. "How's your back?"

"I'll live." Ward hesitated. "They ... did _this_ to you, huh? In K'un Lun?"

"It was part of my training. I could heal myself there."

"Oh yeah, sure, that makes it okay then." Dry sarcasm, then a little silence -- Danny drifting, half-asleep -- before Ward said, his tone gently curious, "Why do you even want to go back?"

He wasn't sure how to explain; he hadn't even been able to explain it to Colleen, and she understood much more of this kind of thing than Ward did. Finally, he said, "Because they have the answers to the questions I need answered, about the Iron Fist and where it comes from and ... what I am, I guess. And ..." The words were surprisingly difficult to say. "Because it was home."

"Home," Ward murmured. He laughed a little. "I can understand that. I'd look for that too, if I knew where it was."

Danny hesitated, then reached out until he found Ward's hand with his good one. Ward tensed when Danny took it.

"Back when I was the Iron Fist, I used to be able to heal with chi. I can't do that anymore, not like I used to, but I can still do it for myself a little, and I think I might be able to help you. Are you willing to try?"

Ward half-smiled. "Oh, sure. What have I got to lose at this point."

Danny curled his fingers around Ward's chilly ones. "You're going to focus on your breathing. Okay?"

"Why not?"

"Breath in with me." Inhale. "Breathe out."

As he got Ward into a pattern of slow, rhythmic breathing, Danny carefully gathered and focused his chi -- it flowed through him in a trickle, now, not the rush that he'd experienced with the Iron Fist, but he gathered and collected it, and poured it down their linked hands, redirecting it away from his own healing and helping Ward's own chi reorganize and support his body's healing ...

"... hey, Danny," Ward said, in a slow, sleepy voice.

"Mmmm?" Danny asked between even breaths.

"This is meditation, isn't it? You're teaching me to meditate. You sneaky jerk."

Danny's breath caught on a laugh and he opened his eyes and saw Ward grinning back at him. Danny curled his fingers in Ward's, and laughed quietly to himself.

"Maybe a little," he admitted. 

"Knew it," Ward said sleepily, still grinning at him.

"Back doesn't hurt as much?" Danny asked hopefully.

"Hardly at all."

Job well done, then. Danny's arm was throbbing again, and he carefully, carefully eased off, letting Ward's own body take over, redirecting his energies to healing his own injuries.

"Ward," he murmured, tugging lightly on Ward's fingers until Ward opened his eyes again. "Ward ... hey ..."

"Mmm, yeah, what?"

"Did _you_ find the answers you were looking for?"

"What are you talking about?" Ward said, a little too quickly. Danny just kept staring at him, until Ward finally muttered, "Nothing that happened out there answered any questions I didn't already know the answers to."

"Yeah, I understand." There were people in K'un Lun who said that pain unlocked doors, but it didn't, mostly, in his experience. Pain was just pain. With his fingers still laced through Ward's, too tired to untangle them, Danny blurted out before he could stop himself, "Your dad's dead, you know? I'll listen if you want to talk about it, but he's gone, he doesn't have any power over you anymore. You don't have to do anything to prove you're not him, to me or anyone else. Not ever again. No matter who it's for, me or ..."

"Hey." Ward's hand curled over Danny's. "It's not about my dad. It's about me, the things I did. Nothing to do with you. Not your fault. _My_ choices. My decision to be here."

"I'm the one who brought you up here."

"I wanted to come. For whatever it's worth," Ward said, "I hope they can tell you what you want to know."

"I'm starting to think I'm chasing ghosts," Danny said, not so much to Ward as to the darkness in the room. Ward's hand was still curled over his, their fingers warming slowly with shared body heat. His breath warmed the wool blanket tucked around his face, bringing out the musky animal smell.

"So tomorrow we find out. And if they're still being dicks ..." Ward's voice was light, with a sarcastic edge. "... I have a Sig Sauer in my backpack."

"Ward!"

"What? They never looked!"

"We're not going to fight our way out of here. Don't even think about it." But as he said that, he remembered the threats he himself had made. If they'd actually killed Ward ... he would have fought, yes. He would have made them pay for what they'd taken from him. He didn't even want to think about it; he was too tired to confront that side of himself. Not tonight.

"Hypocrite," Ward muttered, like he could guess at the general shape of Danny's thoughts, and Danny couldn't help it: he laughed, tired and a little bit drugged and vastly, vastly relieved that things hadn't gone any worse than they had.

When he managed to stop laughing, he said, "They won't touch you again, Ward, I swear."

"Like it's your choice, Danny; go to sleep." But his hand stayed on Danny's, and Danny carefully redirected his chi, to ease them both down into a comfortable and healing sleep. He drifted off to the sound of the falling rain and the crash of distant thunder, moving away across the mountains.

**Author's Note:**

> That lovely prompt from Rainyquot: _Was curious if you had any ideas what kind of shenanigans Harold put Ward through when he mentioned those "tests"? Maybe this gets brought up when desperately looking for shelter with informants Danny found who refuse to let Ward come along because his family was affiliated with The Hand? They ask Ward to prove his loyalty to the Iron Fist in a drastic way. Exasperated/emotional/guilty? Ward almost does, but Danny was having none of it. Bonus points they have a heart to heart too??_  
>  _Oh and to elaborate, what I meant by "desperately looking for shelter" like, idk bad weather?? Or the place they had to go to was isolated and a long way from anywhere? And it's pretty unreasonable to tell someone to go all the way back that late. Or something???_
> 
> I realize that I kinda ended up going off on a tangent with this. I hope it satisfies! :)


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